IFR Lost Comm. Unsure if intentional.

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afcraig2010
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jan 25, 2018 9:00 pm

IFR Lost Comm. Unsure if intentional.

Post by afcraig2010 »

Hello,

I'm Craig M. and I was flying Horizon 2179 SEA-RDM around 0300Z/7pm local time on the 25th. I was able to contact Seattle Clearance, Ground, Tower. I took off with a clearance and was never told to switch to departure. I sat at 3000ft (my initial assigned altitude) and tried to troubleshoot. Eventually just squawked 7600 and did AVE F. My internet connection was fine, I could see myself on the PilotEdge map and I could see that I was transmitting on 121.5 (my last attempt at contacting anyone). I was flying the MCJ Q400 Pro. I tried recycling the power on the unit in the plane, I tried COMM 2.

I'm just not sure if this was an intentional failure from PilotEdge or if it's some weird issue. Either way, it was obviously not initiated by me.
Marcus Becker
Posts: 982
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2013 5:12 pm

Re: IFR Lost Comm. Unsure if intentional.

Post by Marcus Becker »

Pilotedge will not fail anything on you unless you know pilotedge will fail anything on you. Seeing that you are using the mcj (P3D or FSX right?) aircraft, it's not happening anyway. It's an x-plane only feature.
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Keith Smith
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Location: Pompton Plains, NJ
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Re: IFR Lost Comm. Unsure if intentional.

Post by Keith Smith »

I'll clarify slightly. Peter and I are the only ones who can initiate system failures and even then, it's only in xplane, and even then, it's generally only with streamers with whom we have a relationship as part of either testing how various payware aircraft respond (or don't respond) to failures, or to learn how those pilots respond to the failure. Unless someone is streaming, we can't see what their process is in dealing with the failure, or whether the failure even worked.

Something else is going on in your case. It's pretty much impossible to discern after the fact, we'd have to debug in real time. One thing you can do is listen to the audio recordings at the time you were flying to see if the controller was interacting with other pilots before, during and immediately after your flight. We didn't receive any other reports from pilots of any ATC issues on Western US yesterday.
Sabreliner
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2014 10:49 pm

Re: IFR Lost Comm. Unsure if intentional.

Post by Sabreliner »

Hello, I would like to add to a couple of similar experiences using X-Plane 11. They both seem to happen in mountainous areas for me. One time, I was flying into the LA area southbound over the mountains and I lost ATC and had to connect and disconnect after which I could re-establish contact after a minute or so. Today I flew a flight into KGCN, and I completely lost contact with LA Center. I disconnected and reconnected to no avail. Interestingly, when I switched to Tower, I immediately heard the controller. I was about to start a new post about this, when I read this one.


Alan J
Keith Smith
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Location: Pompton Plains, NJ
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Re: IFR Lost Comm. Unsure if intentional.

Post by Keith Smith »

Alan,

What freq were you on with LA Center approaching GCN?
jm67
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Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 4:27 pm

Re: IFR Lost Comm. Unsure if intentional.

Post by jm67 »

Interesting... I had the same thing happen today. I was on with SOCAL on 135.4 executing the RNAV 26 into KCNO, but on final I realized that my switch to tower never arrived. Tried to raise SOCAL but got nothing, and then realized I hadn't heard any other radio calls in awhile. Just landed and turned off the sim. Also using XP11.
Sabreliner
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2014 10:49 pm

Re: IFR Lost Comm. Unsure if intentional.

Post by Sabreliner »

Keith, I believe the frequency was 135.25, the nearest LA Center freq. I don't remember being switched from that one (Is there a way to check?).



Alan
Salire
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Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2018 12:20 am
Location: Asheville, NC USA

Re: IFR Lost Comm. Unsure if intentional.

Post by Salire »

Did you happen to be switching between COM radios? I’ve had trouble with using COM2 in the past. I worked with Keith troubleshooting this. After it was sorted out it happened again. I was flying happily along and then went to COM2 (after COM2 had worked on that flight just fine) and it couldn’t hear me. Finally after getting far too close to the destination airport to make sense, I tuned in approach for that airport on COM1 and the controller said he’d been trying to contact me.
Sally
PPL Asheville, NC
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